Honoring the Holiday

Holiday weekends are never holidays for me. What I think happens is that mentally I think to myself "self, you have an extra day to get things done so lets go crazy". This weekend I leveled the yard around the backyard patio I installed earlier this year, I converted my cross wheelset to Stans tubeless, got in two nice road rides, hit two BBQ's/parties and finally did this to my front side yard.

Prior to this weekend the tree was there but nothing else. I ran out of steam at 8pm last night so tonight I need to plant the plants, run drip lines and clean up the mulch but I think it turned out really nice.

The end of an evil oppressor

Finally an end to the evil overlord known as summer. I like summer as much as anybody....for about a month, than I get sick of the constant sunny and 95 deg weather. Too hot. Hopefully fall will stick around until the end of December, then I'll allow winter (and many weekends spent in St George) for January and February followed closely by a spring including March, April, May and June. That sounds about right. Make it so Number One.

The King of Ping

Picked up this bad boy off of Craigslist last night.


$75 out the door including two brand new in the package $20 paddles and new balls. I won the first Hypio cup three sets to none and I'm gunning for the Chinese in 2012. Now I just need to figure out how to safely take it apart so I can get it downstairs.

Moosecross

The worst Mexican food ever.

Don't ever go to La Puente. Man that place sucked. The 20th east and 33rd south location is near our house and it always seems busy so we decided to give it a try. When you arrive you are lead to a table where your chips are already laid out. Ours were cold yet greasy, probably fried up earlier in the morning, no where near fresh. You are then given a squeeze bottle full of hot sauce they call salsa? Rhonda ordered a chicken Burrito. Beans and rice are $2.50 extra a piece so she got beans as well. Inside her chicken burrito......just chicken and a tiny bit of cheese, nothing else. No onions, veggies or sauce of any kind. Just shredded chicken wrapped in a slimy tortilla. I ordered a combo platter of a taco, a burrito and an enchilada. You don't get to choose what is in these things and again for the $9 cost it doesn't include beans and rice. Instead of chicken, beef or pork the taco and burrito are filled with an odd colored slime that has a few beans in it and a bit of mystery meat. Yum.

Riding AF

Hooked up with some friends on Sunday for a tour of the AF canyon trails. I've ridden down there by myself a couple times in the last eight or so years and was never overly impressed so a guided tour was in order. We started at Timpanooke campground and climbed up to the Summit. Dropped down South Fork, climbed back up to the Ridge Trail, took Ridge Trail back to the Summit and then Horse Flats to Pine Hollow to the road and back up the road to the cars. The trails are fun but pale in comparision to Park City. It was very dusty to the point where I felt like I needed a snorkle at times. A lot of the climbs were loose and rocky from abuse by moto's and horses and some of the singletrack sections were kinda sunk into the ground trenches which are a pain with 180mm cranks. It was still really fun for a change of pace and the views of Timp and the valleys below were spectacular and far superior to the scenery in Park City. If the trails were anywhere but in Utah they would be amazing but compared to Park City's world class singletrack the trails I rode were just a fun change of pace. The bad news from the ride was that Rhonda re-aggrivated her hamstring injury from a couple weeks before. To make sure it heals properly before CX season she needs to take a couple weeks off with only easy spinning allowed. It's probably for the best as she's kinda burned out on riding in the dust and heat of summer anyway.

My TofU moment (AKA rollin' with the pros)

Saturday morning I decided to enjoy the amazingly cool temps by doing a longer ride on the CX bike from my house down to Corner Canyon. The idea of a Clarks TT while I was in the area even crossed my mind. It took about an hour or so to ride down to the equestrian center where I hopped on the trail. The lower trails were pretty loose and sandy and combination of narrow tires and tough gearing had me pretty well blown by the time I made it to Clark's. I blew off the idea of a TT and just continued the climb up Clark's. It hurt......bad. The lowest gear on my CX bike is a 39-27 so my skinny ass basically had to stand the whole way up just to keep the pedals turning. The bike handled real well and I never had any problems with traction even pushing the big (for me) gear. I got to the top, spun around a bit to catch my breath and headed back down Clark's. Not wanting to fight the sand back to the equestrian center I jumped off the trails at the cul-de-sac near the base of Clark's and got on the road. My bottles were empty so I took Highland towards the equestrian center for a refill. As I neared the 13th east intersection a couple of girls were there holding a "Slow" sign pointing down 13th. I figured they were working for the tour so I just ignored them. The started yelling "turn left, turn left". As I passed by I told them I wasn't in the race but thanks for the compliment. I refilled and started heading home on what happened to be the exact route of the tour. The road wasn't closed so I figured what the heck. There were a few spectators along 13th and they cheered as I rode by thinking to myself "hey this is kinda cool". I got passed by a solo Bissel guy and a few other racers riding solo. Made the turn onto Wasatch where I finally got passed by a larger group of 10 or so racers including Will Frishkorn. They were moving pretty slow for pros (later I learned they missed the time cut) so I briefly thought about catching on but decided that probably wouldn't be kosher. There were more crowds on the big hill by the park heading north on Wasatch and they all loudly cheered me on including one guy who realized I wasn't in the race and yelled out "Go Rev" ( I was wearing my team kit). I was hoping to see a crazy guy in a speedo with extra bottles to dump over my head but I guess I'll have to wait till I poach a Grand Tour for that.